Agnosticism

[Guest Joanna Phipps]

Nelly, I submit that you are a bit mistaken

Love, Hate and anger certainly exist but how do you measure them, can you give me a concrete incotroverible measurment of them

electrons exist but can you tell me both where one is and how fast its moving, no because the tool we use to measure them interfers with the measurment. Check the Heisenburg uncertainty principle (this is also why a startrek like transporter may not work)

Positrons certainly exist but cannot be measured by any instrument made of conventional matter

I submit that the creator exists, we mere mortals havent yet figured out how to measure the infinite

Nelly one other major point, except for a very few of us Nobody on this system has any concrete proof that the being that is typing is actually an existing human. I could be a computer with a very good AI system and neural network. From your position you cannot prove one way or another that anyone you talk to on here is actually what or who they state they are. Since by your logic, if you cannot directly measure something it then does not exisit, it follows that since you cannot directly measure any of us then we also do not exist.

However

cogito ergo sum...

Descartes

I think therefore I am

[Guest ChloëC]

I wrote that God (or any god) cannot be measured. There are a number of other things that also cannot be measured that for example astro physicists accept, such as black holes and dark matter. Thirty or more years ago, scientists didn't even know they existed - they were unknown and not measurable. Now, they're known but still not measurable. How do we know they exist? Well, we're able to measure things that do exist that (at this moment) can only be explained by those phenomena and by measuring what goes on around them, we can deduce their existence. That seems to be bordering on faith.

So, because we couldn't measure them and didn't know they existed, does that mean they didn't exist? No, it just means we didn't know what we were looking at. Who's to say that we are or aren't looking at God and not knowing it.

I can't remember the latest numbers, but I keep reading somewhere that there is a sizeable number of people who do not believe humans ever landed on the Moon. One can argue all one wants with them, but (most likely based on their own daily existence) they suspect it to be some kind of government plot and/or Hollywood production. And now no human has been back for like 15-20 years. Which adds to their belief.

We 'smart' people in our smugness fully believe it happened and we look with disdain on those that refuse to believe the obvious. (just like those who have faith in a god, AND those who don't!!!) Yet, I personally can't prove humans went to Moon, except that I have faith in all the actions I saw before my eyes. I can measure (to a limited extent of course) the results of us going to the Moon, but I can't prove it. It's faith.

Like faith in a simple math statement - 1+1=2 . I have faith that "1" means something, as does "2", "+", "=". But I can't prove it. Addition works, but I can only show examples. This equation is based on axioms that we all accept. On faith. The equation works because we postulated the existence of certain axioms that form the basis of math. Like religious people have postulated the existence of (one or more) God. Does that means God exists? No, nor does it mean God doesn't exist. It's faith. It can't be (at this moment, but I can't predict the future) proven, one way or the other.

Faith can't be argued, so I'm probably going to retire from this discussion. It has been interesting.

Chloë

[Guest Nelly]

Hi,

I love this discussion because you make it not easy to me

electrons exist but can you tell me both where one is and how fast its moving, no because the tool we use to measure them interfers with the measurment. Check the Heisenburg uncertainty principle (this is also why a startrek like transporter may not work)

I like that. With the words of the creature of the transporter, "Thanks for the question, it just work fine."

My solution for that problem is easy. Nature also do not know the exact position and impulse of any partical but nature still work just fine. So if nature does not need the exact position and impulse, the transporter also does not need it.

What I want to say with my statement, scientist only says things exist if they can measure them. If they can not measure them, they says that they have a theory that must be checked with a measurement to proof it. But on the other hand. People walk around and tell everybody that god exist. They do not say that god maybe exist and they must find a way to proof it, they just say that he exist. This is the point I do not like. (Also if this people think they are the chosen one and must fight against other countries. Or he has the button to destroy the world and get a message from god to press this button.)

Does anybody know were the idea of god came from?

If we are all a part of a computer game (like Matrix I also love this idea) than is it an error in the code that we get the idea of something like god or the opossite of it?

This kind of discussion is very good to sit back and relax from the daily work. I think people who think about this stuff are open minded. People who onyl say "theirs is one god, that's it!!!" are not open minded.

Greetings

Nelly

P.S.: Yes it is possible to measure love and hate. You can see them in the brain pattern or as chemical things in the blood. It is also possible to measure black holes.

[Guest Eth]

Reading through this - I just wanted to point out:

Love and hate can be measured. They are experiences that most people feel on a semi-regular basis. We know that everything we do is controlled by our body and our brain. We have even found the chemicals that control happiness and depression in the brain. Love, hate, and all of those other emotions probably come from various mixtures of these and other chemicals, and thus we feel them.

Also, I once argued that bit about math with my mathematician boyfriend once, and he quickly corrected me . Numbers are things we assign to "situations". If I have one apple and add a second apple, I have more apples. Specifically, I have two apples. Numbers are the amount, whereas "+" explains the process of adding to the amount, and "=" explains the result. So that can indeed be measured.

I totally agree with Nelly in that the problem with religion is that they don't say "My theory is that God exists", but instead say "God DOES exist and you MUST follow them!". I also disagree with saying that not believing in God requires faith, because it really does not. Believing in God is to either be ignorant of the odds, to be purposefully blind to them, or to simply believe in a God despite them of your own free will, for whatever reason, but to not believe in God can involve 'faith' (trust that there is no God), or one can conclude that based upon scientific evidence that supports the theory that there is no God, and therefore making a decision based upon facts and logic. It's not so much 'faith', because if some new discovery changed these odds, their opinion would also change. This is obviously not so with religious people and those who practice "faith" in God, because if they were doing it based upon what evidence we have available to us now, then they would not believe in God.

I'd also agree with Nelly that, whether religion is right or wrong really isn't a big deal- the big deal is when religion thinks it can impose its beliefs on everyone else. I don't think the law should recognise religion at all, honestly. Do we have laws protecting/supporting/encouraging all the other theories? Do we have laws forcing other people to change how they live their lives because of these theories? No, because that would be absurd and ridiculous. And yet religion thinks it can decide who can or cannot be open about their sexuality, who may or may not marry and have equal rights, who may or may not be discriminated against... and the list goes on. I think people need to wake up and realise that religion is a theory. Nothing more. There is no evidence to support it, and if people weren't blind and led around like sheep, it would never hold up in court. So why the heck do we give it any power or pay it any attention at all? If you want to believe - believe! Just don't think your beliefs have any power over me.

愛 Eth

[Guest ChloëC]

ok, one more thing

Definition of faith - Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.

We are confident that the basic axioms of arithmetic are valid. But can they be measured? Can they be 'proven'? Nope. We take it on faith that '=' means something. That isn't a proveable commodity. It's a statement. We have faith in it. And enough everyday situations to accept it.

That some people have that 'confident belief' or not that 'confident belief' (i.e. inverse, converse, contra-positive, etc.) is not a measure of the existence or non-existence of some thing.

Faith can't be argued. Just because you can't measure something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and as the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle points out, just because you can measure something doesn't mean that's what it is.

Here's another wonderful example. We know how gravity behaves, we experience it, measure its effects, all that, but we really haven't the faintest clue of what it actually is. Go ask somebody to measure gravity itself, not its effects. Can't be done. What would you measure? Gravitrons? Who knows. But we certainly have faith in it.

There's a column in the monthly magazine, 'Astronomy' called 'Strange Universe'. Each time, the writer pretty much tries to explain something that we take for granted (usually we assume we understand it), and one finds after reading the article, that we are pretty much misunderstanding it. Often completely. Such as time, which many scientist now feel is a 'mere ordering process created by the animal's circuitry. What we perceive as time is the specific sensible way our brains arrange complex electrical inputs. The widespread notion of a self-existing temporal grid is almost certainly illusory'.

Why does it all work? As he also wrote 'They help us make sense of the world.'

So, if believing in God makes sense, good. If not believing in God makes sense, good, too. Neither proves anything.

Chloë - signing off from this reality.

[Guest Eth]

if believing in God makes sense, good. If not believing in God makes sense, good, too. Neither proves anything.

I am in total agreement with this.

愛 Eth

[Guest Nelly]

Faith can't be argued. Just because you can't measure something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and as the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle points out, just because you can measure something doesn't mean that's what it is.

I have to write something about the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle. I think it is missunderstoud here.

If you read something about this, than it is something like "you can not measure impulse and position at the same". This implies that only position is possible or impulse but both is needed to say that their is something.

But this is not true. Heisenberg said that you can measure both at the same time, but only one value will be exact. The other value has an error. So it is not 100% right, it is only e.g. 99,99999% right. This error depends on some things.

so if you want to detect an electron, than you can detect it by 100% also if Heisenberg has something to do with it. If you load a capacitor with one electron you can measure the current and you can measure the load (voltage) of the capacitor.

Now let's talk about gravity.

We know how gravity behaves, we experience it, measure its effects, all that, but we really haven't the faintest clue of what it actually is.

We can only measure things by watching the effects of this thinks to the meters. It work for light, current, load and time. So why should it not work for gravity?

What the funny thing is, scientist allways have to proof what they say but the believer do not need to proof what they say. Is that fair?

I ask were the idea of god came from? Up to know nobody ask. So I will write a bit about it.

In the past we had to big cultures, the romanian and the greeks. Both had a lot of gods to explain everything. Now we do not belief anymore that this god exists. For us it is history. Also the egyptians had a lot of gods. Also this gods do not exist anymore. In the second world war a new religion was create in the pacific. they beliefe in John and that John bring freight. If you right something about this religion I think you will start to laugh because it sounds to silly. But they also have a God named John.

So why is it so important that "THE GOD" is true and all others not? Maybe we are at a point like the old greeks and it is time to let God retire because we have other theories that fit better and can explain much more without contradictory?

Greetings

Nelly

[Guest unknowing]

I am definitely Agnostic. While I can't understand why we'd be here if there was nothing before or after, I can't really believe in anything either because there is not enough proof, in my eyes, to say there is or isn't an afterlife or deity. That being said, I still respect people of all religious groups, because why be prejudice against anyone, you are only hurting yourself.

[Guest AlexForever]

I am agnostic because I am skeptical; I do not know for certain if things like God, ghosts and supernatural forces exist, and I am not convinced strongly that they do exist or that they do not exist.

As for an example: I've had direct experience with what appeared to be a ghost, apparently, but it might have also been just a product of my mind, so I cannot know for sure.

I am expecially unsure about God's existence; sometimes there are things that make me think that He does indeed exist, sometimes I think it is most probable that he doesn't. I do not have a firm opinion on this, which is not to say that I didn't think about it seriously and for a long time, because I did and I still do. Even if I were to believe that He does indeed exist I could not say that I KNOW that he exists, because I would have no way to prove it, and believing in something doesn't make it real (except for the placebo effect ).

I do NOT believe in the Bible because I think it is a book written by MEN - by which I mean both "humans" and "specifically male humans" - who had a specific agenda; I did not fully read it yet, but I learned some of it at the Church when I was young (I was raised as a Catholic Christian because my country is a predominantly Catholic one); several parts in the Bible seem to advocate blind obedience of your superiors, as for an example, and this strikes me as something that a person in a position of power would want other people to believe.

I do NOT believe the Pope is the direct voice of God, and I don't trust the Vatican and the highter clergy in general; they tend to follow their own interest and not the interests of the people and to support hate and not love and acceptance.

I also do not follow any organized religion, unless you want to count "Agnosticism" as one LOL

What I AM sure about is that if God does actually exist, and if Heaven and Hell also exist* then the first ones to go to Hell will be those ones who claim to be Christian but instead advocate hatred and hurting people, and making other people's lives miserable in many ways, and forcing other people to undergo horrible things, etc... that because I believe that those are not thing a Good Christian would advocate nor do, and that they are the opposite of what a benevolent God would desire from His followers.

*and I do NOT mean the one in Arizona, California, Michigan, the Cayman Islands or Norway

[Guest ChloëC]

Hey, Alex,

I'm from Michigan and I can say, I've been to Hell and back. Nice place to visit, but I don't think I'd like to live there. Couple of interesting establishments (Dam Sight Inn, cuz Hell is next to a decent sized dam and Screams Ice Cream). Popular place for bikers to come through (both motorized and pedal pushers).

Oh, and I've got some faith, so I'm not agnostic. I feel there has to be a reason for us being here, or what's the purpose of our being different enough from lower life forms. (I'd like to see any lower life form learn something, teach it to others, and communicate it across distance...and time, in that it preserves that learning for future generations. It's great that some animals have learned to use 'tools' (some primates) or can communicate across great distances (whales) but can they communicate what they might learn to others of the species both by personal contact and by some means of intellectual storage? I know a Greek scholar (Eratosthenes) in 276 BC(E) measured the circumference of the round world (not-a flata lika a panacakea, to quote Mr. Peabody's Improbable History) not because I was there but because he wrote it down and others transcribed, stored it, and translated it for me, he passed that learning on to me. Not my fault if others in the intevening years didn't build upon it, but, of course, a lot of learning has been built upon. I certainly didn't have to reinvent the computer and the internet and all the rest to do what I'm doing now. All that makes us different, so my question is, why? what's the purpose. But please don't give me survival of the fittest. We can see long term consequences of our actions, but that doesn't mean we'll do anything about them, so there is no guarantee we will survive, so this unique attribute we have, may not make us the fittest, so again, why do we have it?) Enough rant for now.

Hugz

Chloë

[Guest Mina89]

My approach to agnosticism comes from the fact that this is the only life that I know I'll ever have. Sacrificing experiences within it for the sake of what might happen after death doesn't appeal to me. I reject any absolute claims about the nature of the afterlife or the primary cause of the universe, including the atheistic claim that there are no such things. All of these beliefs are made in ignorance of objective reality.

I do lean toward atheistic beliefs in general, though. The power of serendipity is often underrated. I don't think everything that exists needs to have a reason to do so. The belief that the entire cosmos is the result of coincidence is no more far-fetched than the belief that it was created by some supernatural force that itself exists seemingly by coincidence. However, I place no faith in any of these beliefs.

Even though I do not expect that evildoers are punished in the hereafter, I still live by a fairly consistent moral code that revolves around the principles of fairness, kindness, and duty. I don't need supervision from above to follow this, nor do I need judgement. Treating life as my only shot rather than a test for eternity is actually the way I finally stopped myself from trying to commit suicide, which may be counter-intuitive to some people of faith.

-Valerie

[Guest AlexForever]

My approach to agnosticism comes from the fact that this is the only life that I know I'll ever have. Sacrificing experiences within it for the sake of what might happen after death doesn't appeal to me. I reject any absolute claims about the nature of the afterlife or the primary cause of the universe, including the atheistic claim that there are no such things. All of these beliefs are made in ignorance of objective reality.

I agree. I cannot be certain that "something" or "nothing" exist after this life.

And even if I were 90% certain that an afterlife existed...there would still be a BIG problem:

I would have no way to be sure of how to get in the "good" place and not in the "bad" one, since the requirements seems to change depending on the religion, and I have no way to determinate which one is the "correct" one, LOL

Also, actually doing good things "so that I don't go to hell afterwards" doesn't seem very altruistic and moral...it still means you're doing it for your own benefit.

Sure, someone in need would probably not care if you helped hir just to buy yourself a free ticket to Heaven...but since you would be doing it for an egoistic reason...would you STILL be granted that ticket?

So, in the end, my chances of going into a "good" afterlife (if such a thing exists) are as high as anyone else's, regardless of religion.

[Guest Alexandra89]

I do have one somewhat spiritual belief, though it's a little controversial.

When I die, if I find out there's an all-powerful, all knowing god that created me to serve some purpose, I'm going to kill him.

-Alex

[Guest April63]

I do have one somewhat spiritual belief, though it's a little controversial.

When I die, if I find out there's an all-powerful, all knowing god that created me to serve some purpose, I'm going to kill him.

-Alex

And where will you get the power to kill such an all-powerful being?

[Guest Alexandra89]

And where will you get the power to kill such an all-powerful being?

I was being facetious. Of course I can't scratch omnipotence.

My point is really that I would feel deeply wronged if it turns out I was screwed by design instead of chance. Whatever the reason, I don't feel comforted by the idea that I'm a pawn on a cosmic chessboard.

-Alex

[Guest Aurelia]

Recognizing I am without the benefit of omniscience, I am an agnostic atheist that couldn't be more confident there is no deity, at least not as they are commonly described.

If I die and it turns out there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, I will be one of the ones picking a fight so you wouldn't be alone Alex. I am sure that several philosophers and biologists will be right there too...providing they weren't snuffed out of existence at the first thought of disobedience.

I have a catholic friend who tells me that her god has a sick sense of humor. I tell her that I am not the least bit amused.

[Guest AlexForever]

I was being facetious. Of course I can't scratch omnipotence.

My point is really that I would feel deeply wronged if it turns out I was screwed by design instead of chance. Whatever the reason, I don't feel comforted by the idea that I'm a pawn on a cosmic chessboard.

-Alex

If I find out I was screwed by design, I hope that it's because I did something really horrible in some previous life.

[Guest Miss_Construe]

If I find out I was screwed by design, I hope that it's because I did something really horrible in some previous life.

But would you still be responsible for it?

[Guest AlexForever]

But would you still be responsible for it?

Maybe if it was really terrible?

But then...wouldn't it make sense to remember the reason of such a punishment? So idk, I think it's more of a "random birth defect which happened because of X predisposition and X conditions" than someone's conscious design.